Among the heavy looking hounds, which clustered round this hopeful gentleman, I quickly singled out two couple of widely different breed and character from the rest; your thorough high-bred racing fox-hounds, with ears rounded, thin shining coats, clean limbs, and all the marks of the best class of English hounds.
"Aye! Frank," said Archer, as he caught my eye fixed on them, "you have found out my favorites. Why, Bonny Belle, good lass, why Bonny Belle!-- here Blossom, Blossom, come up and show your pretty figures to your countryman! Poor Hanbury--do you remember, Frank, how many a merry day we've had with him by Thorley Church, and Takely forest?--poor Hanbury sent them to me with such a letter, only the year before he died; and those, Dauntless and Dangerous, I had from Will, Lord Harewood's huntsman, the same season!"
"There never was sich dogs--there never was afore in Orange," said Tom. "I will say that, though they be English; and though they be too fast for fox, entirely, there never was sich dogs for deer"
"But how the deuce," I interrupted, "can hounds be too fast, if they have bone and stanchness!"
"Stanchness be darned; they holes them!"
"No earthstoppers in these parts, Frank," cried Harry; "and as the object of these gentlemen is not to hunt solely for the fun of the thing, but to destroy a noxious varmint, they prefer a slow, sure, deep-mouthed dog, that does not press too closely on Pug, but lets him take his time about the coverts, till he comes into fair gunshot of these hunters, who are lying perdu as he runs to get a crack at him."
"And pray," said I, "is this your method of proceeding?"
"You shall see, you shall see; come get to horse, or it will be late before we get our breakfast, and I assure you I don't wish to lose either that, or my day's quail-shooting. This hunt is merely for a change, and to get something of an appetite for breakfast. Now, Tim, be sure that every thing is ready by eight o'clock at the latest--we shall be in by that time with a furious appetite."
Thus saying he mounted, without more delay, his favorite, the gray; while I backed, nothing loth, the chestnut horse; and at the same time to my vast astonishment, from under the long shed out rode the mighty Tom, bestriding a tall powerful brown mare, showing a monstrous deal of blood combined with no slight bone--equipped with a cavalry bridle, and strange to say, without the universal martingal; he was rigged just as usual, with the exception of a broad-brimmed hat in place of his fur cap, and grasped in his right hand a heavy smooth-bored rifle, while with the left he wheeled his mare, with a degree of active skill, which I should certainly have looked for any where rather than in so vast a mass of flesh as that which was exhibited by our worthy host.
Two other sportsmen, grave, sober-looking farmers, whom Harry greeted cheerily by name, and to whom in all due form I was next introduced, well-mounted, and armed with long single-barreled guns, completed our party; and away we went at a rattling trot, the hounds following at Archer's heels, as steadily as though he hunted them three times a week.